FOR PEOPLE WHO WANT TO KEEP IN TOUCH

This book is for people who find themselves in the same situation as my father and I - someone close to you (your spouse, your parent, a dear friend) has been diagnosed as having Alzheimer's disease and you want to keep in touch with them as long as you possibly can. This desire to stay in touch may be because you love them, or feel a sense of duty or responsibility towards them; probably it will be a mixture of both. You'll be relying on these feelings of love and responsibility to carry you through the times ahead, whatever the circumstances.

The person with whom you want to keep in touch may be living with you. Later they may well be in full-time residential care, as my mother eventually was. The suggestions in this book apply to either situation. Some people who want to keep in touch may, like me, be living at a distance and have other responsibilities to fulfil. If so, the strategies in this book should still help you make best use of any time you can spend visiting a family member or friend who has dementia. There are also some suggestions about how you can maintain a sense of contact during the periods when you are absent.

Many professional carers should also find this book useful, given the increasing emphasis on the need to treat people with dementia as people and to meet their social and emotional needs as well as their physical ones.